The exchange is always simple. “You can bestow whatever you desire upon this person, but-”
It’s that last bit they don’t tell anyone about when someone gets these powers. There are ten of you in the world, and you’re the newest one and they haven’t assigned you a military detail yet. Probably because you were caught under a pseudonym and your roommates aren’t snitches.
Or maybe they are. You can’t think of another way this roving band of jackasses could have known who you were, let alone your route home.
You’ve already been punched once, so you’re woozy. You were already angry and inconvenienced and tired before they found you and that makes you mean.
“I’ll give you what you want,” you tell them. “But there’s always a cost.”
“How about I leave a few of your teeth and we’re even?” The guy in the green shirt that says “Man” on it like he needs to remind everyone or they’ll forget is the one with the heavy fists and quick right jab. He laughs at his ‘joke’ like he’s witty. You have an idea for him.
“I give you super strength, but only as much as your fragile ego can hold,” you tell him, and feel with the skill of a Truthspeaker that it is now So.
The others are getting ready to rough you up again, just from doing what they ask. You laugh hollowly. One guy reaches down and grabs you by your bloody shirt collar. He shakes you and the world spins. You might have a concussion.
“To you I grant the power of perfect balance, but you will never feel the thrill of the rise or fall again.” You smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. His face has become smooth and still.
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” His friend, the tank-top wearing trucker-hat guy is probably a little brighter than his friend. But not much. You look at him and he flinches from your yellow eyes. No one realizes how horrible it is to know the truth of humanity. This guy might get close though.
“You will know the answer to every question, but you’ll never like what you find,” you tell him. His friends- smarter than the three already ‘gifted’- back away slowly.
The guy with the heavy fist punches you.
His metacarpal bones shatter on impact with your face. He screams in horror and pain. You flinch because you feel the adrenaline past the rushing in your ears.
“Fragile child,” you can taste blood in your mouth. “I gave you super strength,” to his friend you ask: “Why isn’t he using it?” You laugh and spit blood on his doc martin boot.
The others are backing away. The guy who shook you is shoved by his friend. He doesn’t even rock on his heels, face placid.
“What did you do to me?” He asks like he’s asking for the weather. Like he’s asking for the time, directions, maybe even for a little bit more clarity than he already has.
“He gave you a superpower that will hurt you every day,” the all-knowing trucker hat guy whispers. “He gave it to all of us. Things that are incredible- and horrible.” His face is pale, clammy. His eyes are wide enough to show whites. You don’t usually revel in the side effects of Truthsaying, but you’re not in your right mind at this moment. They punched your sense right out of you.
“Will you be able to live with your powers?” You ask the all knowing guy and watch as the knowledge comes to him whether he wants it or not.
“No,” he says with finality. He looks down at his fists, clenched at his sides. They loosen.
“Should we kill him?” The man robbed of every change in his life asks like it doesn’t matter to him whether you live or die. Because it doesn’t. Nothing will ever move him again.
“To you,” you say to his two friends, “I will give whatever you want, but you will want for nothing.” You grin with blood red teeth.
They’re running away. But it’s too late. You feel their will drain away. Feel them lose and gain everything in a moment. They get into their escalade and they just sit in the parking lot. You imagine they’ll need round the clock care now.
The guy who knows all sits down next to you on the pavement, a few feet away. His back presses against the dirty brick as he watches his friends- the man who can’t be moved and the man whose bones are as fragile as his ego- get into their red pickup truck with its thin blue line across the back windshield.
“Do you know everything?” He pulls his hat off, he’s balding on top and rubs it with one calloused hand. You lean to the side and throw up on the pavement. Even as he asks, he knows the answer and a little sob breaks free of his throat. “How could you do this to me?”
He asks and he knows, burying his face in his hands as he cries.
Now that you’ve thrown up you feel a little more like yourself.
You’re almost sorry. Almost.
“I can’t undo what I’ve done,” you tell him. “But if you hadn’t jumped me I wouldn’t have been out of my mind enough to do this to begin with.”
“You monsters are too dangerous to live.” He lifts his tear-tracked face, fury and despair in equal measures shining from his eyes.
“Ask me if I’m the real monster here,” you look him right in the eyes, the yellow of your own irises dimmed back to brown. You’re not using your powers. You’re inviting him to know the truth. Man-to-man. “Ask me who the real monsters were today.”
He doesn’t, because he already knows.